Study on a Small Power Reactor With Compact Pressure Vessel and Natural Circulation

Abstract

There is movement which is developing the small reactor for the small electricity grid in place of a big power reactor which requires the high capital cost. This paper introduces a small power reactor whose purpose is to achieve high economic competitiveness and advanced safety. In order to attain high economic competitiveness, it is designed to be small and simple and uses natural circulation and high pressure. A steam generator is integrated into the reactor pressure vessel (RPV), thus dispensing with a primary system and preventing radiation leakage from the reactor core. The small core is designed to have a high power density (100 MW/m3, almost twice that of a conventional boiling water reactor). The concept of a 300 MWt (100 MWe) core design is established by introducing a boiling heat transfer system. By boiling cooling water, the cooling-water circulating flow quantity in a reactor core is enlarged. By increasing a flow, the minimum critical power ratio is improved, which is an important core characteristic. Furthermore, using a burnable poison (Gd2O3), the excess reactivity of a reactor core is reduced and excess reactivity is controlled only by the control rod. Moreover, the maximum linear power density is improved and the critical power ratio is minimized by optimizing the burnable poison arrangement and the control rod pattern. In order to attain high safety, our small reactor has an advanced decay heat removal system that can cool the core without external support. This decay heat removal system is part of the secondary cooling system and combined with a cooling tower. As a result, the quantity of cooling water stored in the decay heat removal system is reduced, and longtime decay heat removal is possible by small equipment.